02-16-2025, 07:59 AM
Yes, somehow the oral lore of Christ's teachings were quite stable among the early apostles. It doesn't take a genius to see that Paul's letters in particular reference teaching that doesn't show up in the Gospels, so we know there had to be a substantial amount that never got written down. We have enough, but I am among those who assume it was not so much the specifics but the broad approach to the Old Testament record, because that was their Bible. The trick is to compare what we have in the OT with what shows up in the NT.